Or to take their chances. From the little he’d told her about it, she thought it must have been touch and go whether he’d get his boat back at all: they’d sunk something or other, then been trapped by some other force.
Now, she thought, all he had to watch out for was that Joan creature.
She was coming up to the bridge where the road swung left across the Aulne. Rattling over it. Thinking ahead again: after about a couple of kilometres there was a crossroads, of sorts, an intersection with a minor road which was also the direct route between Pleyben and Coray. About eight kilometres short of Briec, that would be. Briec might be a likely place for a road-block.
Might turn down sooner. There were two or three smaller roads – lanes – that would bring one down to Landuda without going into Briec at all. Edern, that village just before Briec was called. She could see it in her memory – although with the blaze of sunset right in her face now she couldn’t see much here… One hand up, and squinting into it: slowing a bit. Black silhouette of a little church, just off to the right: that was the Pleyben-Coray road…
And something going on… Slowing even more. There was a small crowd on the roadside, around a gazo truck. Right on the bend, obscuring whatever might be beyond it. A few people turning this way – waving at her – wanting her to stop? Looking at them as if she didn’t quite comprehend: then she was past them, telling herself she couldn’t have helped anyway: certainly couldn’t have stopped, become caught up in God only knew what. Some nurse, you are, Mlle Tanguy… Could have been someone sick or dying: Nurse Tanguy mutters, ‘Tant pis’, drives on by.
Well – not being a total idiot…
Sharp right-hand bend coming up. There was a turning to the left there as well, she remembered: in fact that way you’d hairpin back to Trevarez – via Laz.
She’d made the bend, round to the right. The sun was down: the sky burnt-orange, the cloud all dissipated or scattered on the wind. Slowing again – for seven meandering cows herded by two small, ragged boys. Emaciated – cattle and boys… Le Guen would be on his way by this time, she guessed. And in the Château de Trevarez the nobs would be at dinner. At the trough: last guzzle – for some of them, anyway. Le Guen would have set out, she thought: he had only six or seven kilometres to come, but he’d have been twitching with nerves all day and he wouldn’t willingly have risked being caught out after curfew. Clear of the straggle of cows now, accelerating again: deliberating whether to take the next turn to the left – in roughly four kilometres. It would be a left turn with a right fork almost immediately after it, and it would save her having to pass through Edern, where several small roads impinged and there might be a road-block.
But there wouldn’t be, surely. A kilometre further along, a similar block in Briec would cover the north-south road as well as this one.
But the north-south road mightn’t interest them, since it didn’t lead anywhere near Trevarez?
Make your silly mind up!
OK. Next turn left…
Car coming up behind, rather fast.
She slowed a bit, and eased in closer to the right. Slits of masked headlights growing and brightening in the Peugeot’s rear-view mirror made the surroundings darker still. All the colour overhead had gone. The car behind was closing up fast enough to be petrol-engined. First car in either direction for several minutes, as it happened.
Come on, come on…
Hanging back there. Reminding her of those Boche louts when she’d been getting towards Loudéac. It definitely had slowed.
Gendarmerie looking for a stolen gazo?
About a kilometre to go to the turn, she guessed. Wondering whether it would be wise to take it or better to carry on, if this thing was still behind her when she got there. Carrying on would mean chancing her luck in Edern, while turning left – well, you’d be leading them into a patch of country where you’d be better off without them.
Landuda, though. She did have an address to call at. That story’d stand up, all right. At least, if they didn’t check on the gazo’s registration.
She saw the convoy then. The car behind her had dropped back a little, and on the left-hand side of the road – which for about a kilometre was virtually dead straight just here – there was a line of heavy Wehrmacht trucks parked on the verge. They weren’t showing lights. Figures moved around them: the flare of a match or lighter lit a pale face under a helmet and another leaning close. Rosie counted the big trucks as she passed them: seven – eight – nine…
Nine. All behind her now, she had only the rear-view mirror to go by – seeing the car that had been behind her pulling over to that side, its seepage of headlight washing the sides of trucks as it bounced up on to the verge beside them. Its lights went out, then: and she was having to concentrate on the road ahead, in order not to miss the left-turn that had to be coming up – any moment now.
There…
And she was on her own: no traffic from either direction to see her make the turn: she took it carefully, unhurriedly: and then more or less at Peucat-pace through the lanes. Dusk deepening over lush, spring-scented countryside – and having it to herself. Relief was tinged by worry over that parked convoy, though. There could be about twenty men in each of those trucks, and there’d been nine of them – pointing towards Châteauneuf-du-Faou, apparently killing time, and joined then by a staff car from the direction of Châteauneuf.
Didn’t have to mean a bloody thing.
A couple of hundred men, though: with Laz – what, about six kilometres from them, if they took that right fork?
At the Niver corner – a little church – she turned right. Still making for Landuda, but by what was probably a shorter route – via a hamlet called St Adrien. Photographic memory plus absorption of maps’ details came in useful, at times like this. At St Adrien – there’d be no roadsign, at most you’d see a few cottages, farm buildings – she’d go straight over, turn left at the crossroads after that one. The alternative to passing through Landuda would have been to get on the Briec-Quimper road for a kilometre or so, turn off it again at Moncouar. But she thought that would be the worse risk of the two – which it might well have been, since Landuda when she got to it turned out to be a ghost-village: nothing moving, not a glimmer of light anywhere. Ten or fifteen minutes past nine, she guessed – when she drove into it southward and out again westward, seeing no living soul and as far as she knew being seen by no one. She couldn’t read her watch in the gazo’s dark cab, but that was what it had to be.
Near enough four kilometres from here to Moncouar.
Those trucks must be on some night exercise, she told herself. Waiting for the dark: and/or for the rendezvous with whoever had been in the car. An umpire controlling the exercise, perhaps. Nothing to do with Trevarez, or Kerongués.
Well – obviously nothing to do with Kerongués…
At Moncouar she turned sharp left in the southern end of the village, without touching the main road at all; she was heading south then, for the bridge between Gougastel and Kerongués. Distance to Lestonan about five kilometres: six, say, to the Perrot farm. Where le Guen might be already.
Scared stiff, no doubt. It was going to be a long, long evening, sitting with him in that kitchen, trying to calm his nerves. Roll on Lezèle, she thought: final handshake, good luck, François. Those had been heavy-going sessions that she’d had with him, and tonight wasn’t likely to be much better.
That was Gougastel she’d pounded through. Bridge just ahead now. Odd that they’d selected this point to bridge the Odet – just where it widened. Anywhere to the east of this you could practically have spat across it. There it was, anyway: she was braking, slowing, then grinding over: off the bridge then, she was in Kerongués. Marie-Claude within a few hundred metres of her. Passing the sign at that turn-off that led back towards the river and the prison camp, thinking of the shock the kid would have when Lannuzel and his friends had her brought out to them. Rosie had suggested this evening that he might let her know what was happ
ening as soon as he safely could, so she wouldn’t be left wondering for any longer than might be necessary whether she was being taken to be shot.
Now the Lestonan fork. Bearing left: with only about four hundred metres to go from here. She could already see the poplars ahead there on the left: and soon after, lower down, the ridge of the barn’s roof against a few early stars. Nine twenty-five, she guessed. Braking sharply: that was the entrance, where the trees stopped. As she turned into it, she flicked the lights off – not keen to have Perrot’s neighbours come investigating. She could see the comer of the barn easily enough without the lights – and the nearer end of the squat little house further back… Swinging the wheel over: around that corner into the yard and stopping, then reversing up close to the house but where the end of the barn cut off any view in from the road. Stink of cows, or slurry. Lannuzel would have plenty of room to drive in – in about three hours’ time. Or two and a half, say. In, and straight into the barn.
She switched off.
No sounds, no movements – except for sound from the gazo’s burner. When it had cooled, she’d refuel – as requested. Fuel – charcoal – was in the boot, parcelled in an old tarpaulin.
There was no light showing from the house. Not that one would have expected any. Even if le Guen was in there. The odds were he’d be crouched in a corner with his teeth chattering. Thinking of that as a characteristic, not in a condemnatory sense. People had or acquired different levels of stress-tolerance, that was all. She pulled her valise up close and opened it, delved into the bottom of it for her gun, and transferred it to the right-hand pocket of her coat. Feeling for the safety-catch with her thumb, sliding it off then on again. She left the valise where it was, for the moment, opened her door and got out, closed it soundlessly and started towards the other end of the house. The door at the roadside end was the one into the kitchen, Lannuzel had mentioned. She passed the nearer one without even trying it, therefore. There was cow-shit all over the yard, right up to the house wall: luckily the pats seemed to be mostly hard. When you trod in a soft one, she thought, you’d know it.
She was a couple of metres from the door when she heard a car coming. Cars plural, in fact, but at first she thought only one. She froze, close to the wall. The car was coming from the south, the main road, and swept past, travelling fast – or seemingly fast, in such a narrow lane: she saw the swift passing flare of its lights as the engine-note peaked and began to fall, but a second one was coming – close behind it and exactly the same. Petrol smell then as well as cow. She heard the noise fading northward, and could tell they’d taken the right fork – for Kerongués and the bridge, the way she’d come about two minutes earlier. She stayed where she was, listening – for any more that might be coming, or for those two returning: coming here, maybe, having realized they’d shot past? Nothing, though, only the deepening quiet. They might have gone over the bridge, or have turned off to the Kerongués prison: but petrol-engined cars travelling in company by night and at that kind of speed would almost certainly be Gestapo or SD.
But then again – why not? That was an internment camp. They obviously would visit it, from time to time. Just as the military did conduct night exercises, troop convoys did stop on roadsides, on occasion.
Deep breaths, Rosie. Slow the thing down…
The door had been forced – as promised. She pushed at it – gently, but the hinges were stiff and needed a solid shove. Left hand on the door, right one finding the gun in her pocket. She called softly into the house, ‘François? François, it’s me – Zoé…’
Gun out – at sudden movement—
Cat – or large rat. There’d been a thump, then a skittering sound. Nothing human. She could smell lamp-oil and feel the kitchen’s warmth, but she was alone here, could feel that too, now.
* * *
Telephone…
Peucat jerked awake. He’d dozed off at his desk, where he’d begun a letter to one of his daughters. Had managed only three or four lines, he saw, before dropping off. An empty glass, and a three-quarters empty bottle: and heaven knew where the next might come from. Poor old Timo: and Adèle. God give them strength… He shuffled across the room and through to the hall, where the phone had just rung again.
‘Peucat.’
‘Call for you from Quimper. Hold on…’
‘Yes? This time of night? Who’s—’
‘Henri – it’s me…’
‘Paul?’
Paul Berthomet. Peucat reached to a light-switch and checked the time: It was a few minutes to ten. Late enough, but it felt even later. He’d have thought his old friend would have been in bed by now – snuggled up to old Sylvie’s not inconsiderable bulk…
One of them ill, he guessed. Or worse – Sylvie’d been living on borrowed time for years.
‘Henri?’
‘What’s wrong, Paul?’
‘Well – I’ve a fellow here – don’t know him from Adam, just came banging on the door, but I think – he seems to be straight, and he’s given me certain evidence, not proof exactly but—’
‘What are you talking about, Paul?’
‘I’d better just put him on. Please – M’sieur…’
‘Dr Peucat—’
‘Yes?’
‘Forgive this intrusion. My name’s Prigent. I have a most urgent message for a young woman who may go by any name at all but to me used the pseudonym ‘‘Zoé”. She won’t be with you now, I know – unfortunately—’
‘I don’t know anyone called Zoé.’
‘It was to you, at your number, she arranged for a message from a person by name of le Guen to be passed by M. Berthomet here – wouldn’t that identify her to you?’
‘What’s this about?’
‘Doctor – if you know how to contact her or any of her friends—’
‘What friends?’
‘Colleagues. I hoped there might be a telephone—’
‘I’ve no idea – where, or of any telephone, or even what you’re telling me!’
‘Her colleagues then. Far as she’s concerned, I’ll try… But anyone associated with her or – this thing tonight. It’s blown, doctor – all of it. Whatever they’re doing – Trevarez or Kerongués, wherever – they’re in a trap, that’s what I’m telling you. I’m finished too – I’m on my way out: en route I’ll try, but—’
‘This is gibberish, to me. Whoever you are—’
‘Michel Prigent. If you have any way of contacting them – call them off, tell them to clear out, quick. Le Guen – who dropped your message here? – he’s in SD hands, whatever he knew, assume they know. So – up to you, doctor…’
A voice in the background – Paul’s: ‘If that’s all now, M’sieur – I’ll speak to him again.’
‘Very well…’
‘Henri?’
‘Yes – Paul, you believe this, you say?’
‘Whatever it is, he means it. All I want to say is – Henri, look after yourself now. Whatever else is going on – I beg you…’
‘You needn’t worry about me. But I must be quick now. Paul – thank you!’
Sylvie’s voice from the background: ‘Give him my love!’
‘You heard that. Mine too, Henri. Good luck.’
The line went dead. Peucat made sure of it, then joggled the telephone rest. His eyes were watering; he wiped at them with his sleeve, muttering, ‘Oh, please, please—’
‘Yes, caller?’
He gave her the Millau number at Châteauneuf. ‘As quickly as possible, please?’
‘I’ll try. Lines seem to be busy, all over. All of a sudden…’
‘My call really is – very urgent—’
‘All right, doctor.’
‘Oh – you know who—’
‘Naturally. Who doesn’t know Dr Peucat of St Michel-du-Faou?’
‘Well, I just had a call from a raving lunatic… Anyway – if you could be quick, please?’
‘Well, don’t hang up…’
Nightmare. Eyes screwe
d shut again. The name Prigent did ring a bell of sorts: there was a dentist in Quimper of that name…
‘You’re connected, doctor!’
‘Thank you very much… Hello?’
‘Henri – that you?’
‘Brigitte – my dear girl. I suppose Guy’s not with you?’
‘No. Won’t be back tonight either. But why, what—?’
‘Listen. Are you able to get in touch with him – or any of them?’
‘No. Well – I know where they were going to… But – what’s the time now? After ten? Anyway – has something gone wrong?’
‘I had a call, a minute ago – a warning. Someone who used a different name for – you know, my assistant – he said it’s blown, it’s a trap, whatever they’re doing they must pull out – immediately, or—’
‘Mother of God…’
‘Is there any way we could get a message to him?’
He heard a breath like a gasp. Then: ‘If I go myself. The only way. I need a minute to think… No – Henri, I will go. At once, I’ll—’
‘Be careful? Take care, Brigitte – my dear, if I could do it—’
‘You can’t. You take care. Goodbye…’
He wondered whether the operator would have been listening. And whether there was anything else he could do. It seemed obvious there wasn’t, though. All he could do was get his bag down: it was three-quarters packed already, always was.
Warn Marthe?
He decided against it. She had no connection with Guy Lannuzel or anyone else down there – or with Suzanne either. She’d be safer left unwarned, clearly uninvolved. Suzanne, though – her radio, somewhere in the attic…
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